London. Guglielmo Marconi meets for the first time with his cousin Henry’s lawyer, William Carpmael, who has specific experience in the industrial application of electricity. A few days later, the first patent is filed.

London. The very young (22-year-old) Guglielmo Marconi has only arrived in the city a few days ago, but he is already receiving General Annibale Ferrero, the Italian ambassador to London and also a senator, at his home (71 Hereford Road, Bayswater). Marconi would like to offer his invention of wireless telegraphy to the Italian government, but Ferrero strongly advises against it. “I advise young Marconi to protect his invention with worldwide patents, to reserve for himself freedom of action with the Italian government in any patent assignment agreement, and to travel freely wherever he can most easily obtain the large funds needed to launch such an important new invention, which cannot be kept secret for long.” He also says that the Italian government is so rogue that it would have no qualms about stealing his invention. And that it is the most idiotic government in existence, that it only harms the nation, and that the war in Africa is madness. Ferrero knows what he’s talking about: he’s a scientist and a soldier. A few days later (March 1), Italy suffers a heavy defeat at Adwa in the war in Africa, marking the failure of Crispi’s policies in Africa.

Henri Becquerel first observed the phenomenon of uranium radioactivity. He intended to conduct an experiment on the fluorescence of uranium salts, but instead abandoned the experiment and left the photographic plate with the uranium salt chip on it in a drawer. A few days later, on March 1st, he developed the plate anyway, attempting to detect a faint ring of fluorescence, but to his surprise, he clearly saw the shape of the chip (caused by the uranium’s nuclear radiation).

Guglielmo Marconi’s first experiments (at age 21) were conducted at his father’s residence (Giuseppe Marconi): Villa Griffone in Pontecchio Marconi, near Bologna. Marconi transmitted a radio signal from the window of his laboratory to bypass the Celestini hill, located 2 km away. That same year, Guglielmo Marconi, whose mother was Irish, Annie Jameson, moved to London to put his discovery to good use.

Edward Dean Adams and Nikola Tesla found the Nikola Tesla Company. The American economy is still in recession after the financial panic of 1893, which forces the new company to significantly shift its strategy from divergent (innovation) to convergent (product development). But Tesla isn’t as good at this.

Dubois returned to Europe after his discovery of the Trinial Skullcap attributed to the hominid Anthropitecus erectus, later popularized as Java Man and today known as Homo erectus; he expected a triumphant reception, which instead turned out to be very lukewarm and even hostile; Dubois died in 1940 without seeing his discovery recognized.

Aspeth Hall proposed modifying Newton’s formula for Universal Gravitation by replacing the exponent 2 of GmM/r^2 with 2.00000016 to accommodate certain deviations such as the orbit of Mercury; these deviations would later be explained by Einstein.

Giuseppe Verdi, at the age of 80, composed the opera Falstaff. At 74, he had composed Otello.

Panic on Wall Street

Bayer chemist Feliz Hofmann investigated the properties of compounds with similarities to salicyclic acid, obtained from salicin, a molecule with analgesic properties isolated in 1827 from willow bark (Salix). Salicyclic acid, despite containing glucose, has a bitter taste. Its properties reduce fever and relieve pain, and it has an anti-inflammatory effect, although it is highly irritating to the stomach. Hofmann developed a derivative of salicyclic acid: acetylsalicylic acid, which attenuated the corrosive properties in the stomach, and tested it on his father, who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis. Fortunately for him, his father, and Bayer, the experiment was a success. Bayer marketed the product, under the name Aspirin, in 1899. The name Bayer became synonymous with aspirin and brought the company’s fortune. The synthesis of aspirin would later evolve, starting from phenol. It would later be discovered that aspirin also had the property of thinning the blood.

United States. In the International Niagara Commission’s contest to determine the best method for extracting and distributing electricity from the falls, Lord Kelvin insists to its leader, banker Edward Dean Adams, “Trust you to avoid the gigantic mistake of adopting alternating current.” Adams instead chooses the AC proposed by Westinghouse, based on Tesla’s patents, opting for two-phase for short-distance distribution in Niagara and three-phase for longer-distance distribution in Buffalo. Among other things, copies of the Westinghouse proposal will be discovered in GE’s offices, resulting in accusations of industrial espionage.

United States. Westinghouse (with Nikola Tesla’s patents) and General Electric (with Elihu Thomson and Charles Bradley’s patents) are locked in a patent dispute over multi-phase AC motors and generators. The legal battle has obvious implications for the contest established by banker Edward Dean Adams (formerly head of the Cataract Construction Company in Niagara): the International Niagara Commission, to determine the best method for extracting and distributing electrical energy from the falls. The contest extends to 28 countries worldwide and includes several American companies and participants. Edison (obviously) considers using direct current (DC), while Westinghouse (before consulting with Tesla) envisions using compressed air pipes to transmit the power. Adams opts for electric current. The (newly formed) General Electric (with Edison) then proposes DC for Niagara and AC for Buffalo (more distant) in 1892. This is until Westinghouse arrives with his patents, filed by Tesla. These are then contested by GE. In fact, the Wetinghouse proposal submitted for the Niagara contest in March 1893 envisaged two-phase 90-degree systems, while the GE proposal envisaged three-phase 120-degree systems.

United States. Westinghouse decides (finally) to enforce his (Tesla’s) patents for three-phase AC motors and generators. This also applies to the contest established by banker Edward Dean Adams (formerly head of the Cataract Construction Company in Niagara): the International Niagara Commission, to determine the best method for extracting and distributing electrical energy from the falls. The contest extended to 28 nations worldwide and several American companies and participants. Edison (obviously) considered using direct current (DC), while Westinghouse (before consulting with Tesla) considered using compressed air pipes to transmit the power. Adams opted for electric current. The (newly formed) General Electric (with Edison) then proposed DC for Niagara and AC for Buffalo (more distant) in 1892. That was until Westinghouse arrived with his patents, obtained by Tesla.

Karl Pearson invented the Chi-Square Method, which determines whether a data set conforms to the distribution we believe it to conform to. The test was demonstrated in Monte Carlo on the numbers drawn at a roulette wheel.

Homestead Strike, Cleveland, Ohio. Two thousand workers at Andrew Carnegie’s steel mills are on strike over the unacceptable working conditions imposed by ruthless manager Henry Clay Frick. Carnegie has traveled to his estates in Scotland to give Frick a free hand, who hires the Pinkertons, a powerful, heavily armed private militia. The clash with the workers results in nine deaths and hundreds of injuries, but also causes a huge uproar across the country and a wave of consequences, from anarchist attacks to an attempted assassination of Frick.

United States. The bicycle craze reaches America. And the Wright brothers take advantage of it to open a bicycle sales and repair shop. Since cycling is mostly done in the summer, they have a lot of free time in the winter, which they use to experiment with new ideas. They first build a small experimental helicopter. But above all, they realize that the problem to solve isn’t power, but control, as with bicycles. In 1899, they build a glider to test wing surfaces, and in 1900, they make their first flight in the fall, followed by the first manned flight in December 1903.

The General Electric Company was born as a merger between the Edison Electric Light Company and the Thomson-Houston Company

Paris. Nikola Tesla, fresh from his tremendous success in London, also visits the French capital and gives a lecture at the Societe de Physique and the Societe International des Electriciens. Edouard Hospitalier calls him “almost a prophet.” Tesla then meets with representatives of Schneider & Co. and sells them the license to produce his motors in France and Germany.

Construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway in Russia